The iPhone 5 Was Real, Says A Source Who Played With A Prototype

Remember how disappointed everyone was back in October when Apple announced an iPhone 4S and not an iPhone 5?

Everyone had been led to believe by scores of reports that there would be a revolutionary new iPhone with a bigger screen and a new slimmer look.

Well, it turns out the "iPhone 5" - or at least, a fully redesigned iPhone - was real and it was scrapped only months before the iPhone 4S was announced.

We've been told this by an industry source who has been right about future Apple products in the past.

We have not been able to verify what he told us with a second source. So we're still treating these details as rumors. You should probably still read this post with a nice fat dose of salt.

The story our source told us does, however, fit into a broader narrative that is currently being passed around the industry. Because of that we thought you'd like to hear what we heard and make a judgment for yourself.

So, here's what we were told.

Our source said that Apple engineers he knows thought until about three months before the iPhone 4S was released, that a new fully re-designed iPhone was going to be Apple's next big announcement.

This source said that he spent about two weeks with one prototype version of this phone.

The prototype was MUCH faster than normal iPhones, but that's because it had its limiter removed to disguise its actual power. Its battery life sucked.

Engineers told our source that the new phone was supposed to have a 10 megapixel lens.

Finally, our source said the prototype had Siri, but it was called "Assistant."

Ellis Hamburger, Business Insider

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So why did the new iPhone not happen?

Dan Frommer, Business Insider

Our source doesn't claim to know.

He says the rumor among Apple employees is that Steve Jobs was unhappy with the bigger screen because it "fragmented" iPhones, Apple's big argument against Android is the way all the different phones from different manufacturers fragment that operating system.

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In the end, we didn't get a new iPhone. We got the 4S. Is it worth buying?